Wednesday, October 31, 2012

It issaidthat the U.S. is behind a new initiative to form a transitional government for
Syria. American officials, we are told, are doing all they can to ensure
inclusivity and adequate representation of all major communities and political
groups, including an attempt to bring in as many representatives of the
internal opposition as possible. But by now, the fragmentation of Syria is a
done deal, warlordism is all the rage, and any national government will have to
act as a government-in-exile for years to come. The old political class in Syria
has become largely irrelevant to the processes unfolding in the country.

Tuesday October
30, 2012

Today’s
Death toll: 163. The Breakdown: Toll includes 13 children and 7
women: 72 in Damascus and Suburbs, 50 in Idlib (most in the shelling of Maaret
Al-Nouman and dozens in Saraqeb and Kafar Batekh), 13 in Aleppo, 12 in Homs, 7
in Daraa, 5 in Hama, 2 in Deir Ezzor and 2 in Lattakia (LCC).

The rebel hold on Maaret al-Numan has
disrupted the regime's ability to send supplies and reinforcements to Aleppo,
where government forces have been bogged down since July in a bloody fight for
control of Syria's largest city. Rebel advances over the past week in Aleppo
have added urgency to opening the route.

… over the last several months,
according to U.S. officials and Syrian opposition figures, the State Department
has worked to broaden its contacts inside the country, meeting with military
commanders and representatives of local governance councils in a bid to bypass
the fractious SNC… The new council is an attempt to change that dynamic. Dozens
of Syrian leaders will meet in the Qatari capital, Doha, on Nov. 3 and hope to
announce the new council as the legitimate representative of all the major
Syrian opposition factions on Nov. 7, one day after the U.S. presidential
election. The Obama administration sees the new council as a potential interim
government that could negotiate with both the international community and the
Syrian regime. The SNC will have a minority stake in the new body, but some
opposition leaders are still skeptical that the effort will succeed.

It is precisely when one judges, as we
do, that the dictatorship of the Assads is deservedly doomed and Islamist
fundamentalism constitutes a major danger for the country's future that the
duty to protect is imperative. And related to and as imperative as this duty to
protect is the duty to ensure the security of all elements, all the constituant
minorities of the Syrian people. What is at stake goes beyond the fate of
Syria.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Whether Obama’s Syria team failed to predict what was all
too predictable in Syria, or simply did not give a damn, does not matter. The
result is both a tragedy and a travesty of justice, decency and humanity. Obama
might have killed Bin Ladin, but he also gifted Al-Qaeda a new base for its global
operations and the potential of making a hundred new Bin Ladins. The brunt of
this failure will be borne by Syrians of course, but soon people all over the region
and the world, including Americans, will suffer as well. This is the price of
indifference in our interconnected world.

Monday October
29, 2012

Today’s
Death toll: 115. The Breakdown: Toll includes 7 children and 3
women: 53 in Damascus and suburbs (including 10 in Al-Hajar Al-Aswad and 10 in the
Jaramana explosion), 27 in Aleppo (most in Maghayer neighborhood), 13 in Idlib,
9 in Homs, 6 in Daraa, 4 in Hama and 3 martyrs in Deir Ezzor. Other Developments: 416 violations of the ceasefire
have been documented, including aerial bombardment in 26 locations mostly in Damascus
and suburbs (LCC).

The failure to push through a truce so
limited in its ambitions — just four days — has been a sobering reflection of
the international community's inability to ease 19 months of bloodshed in
Syria. It also suggests that the stalemated civil war will drag on, threatening
to draw in Syria's neighbors in this highly combustible region such as Turkey,
Lebanon and Jordan.A
jihadist group prospers in Syria

For more than a year, the Obama
administration has been assuring the world that the downfall of Syrian dictator
Bashar al-Assad is “a matter of time.” Yes, its own Middle East experts warned,
but how much time matters. The longer the fighting goes on, they said, the more
likely it is that what began as a peaceful mass opposition movement would be
hijacked by extremists, including allies of al-Qaeda. President Obama ignored
that advice, ruling out measures that could have quickly brought down the
regime — such as a no-fly zone — in favor of a year of feckless diplomacy. But
it turned out the experts were right. So now the consequence of Obama’s
passivity has a name, one that will surely haunt the occupant of the White
House in 2013: Jabhat al-Nusra.

In their desperation, Syrians have
become cynical towards America's true stance on the Assad regime. Still, they
have given the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt, telling
themselves that nothing will change before the US elections. But as the number
of dead steadily increased, the hope of a shift in US foreign policy towards
Syria after the elections has faded. This was clearly expressed on October 19,
the first Friday since the revolution began to have been given an anti-American
name: "America, your silence is complicit in thousands of our
deaths."

Like so many are willing to say these days, it was only a matter of
time: the flourishing of Jihadi groups, Arab-Kurdish clashes, and the breakdown
of the state. Each and every of these developments was all too predictable, and
was in fact predicted, including by yours truly on this blog, and by many
others.

Whether Obama’s Syria team failed to see this, failed to predict the
all too predictable, or simply did not give a damn, does not matter. The result
is both a tragedy and a travesty. Obama might have killed Bin Ladin, but he
also gifted
Al-Qaeda a new base and the potential of making a hundred new Bin Ladins.

The brunt of this failure will be borne by Syrians of course, but soon Americans
will suffer as well. Soon, someone in the United States will once again have a
reason to ask “why do they hate us?” And experts will rush in to provide the
same tired answers that conflate ideology with facts. The result will be new and
often flawed policies that reflect too many ideological compromises to allow
them to be effective, and the world will sputter on towards a new tragedy.

You cannot break this cycle without some honest discussion about
America’s real place in this world and without engaging the world in a real
discussion about the nature, structure and decision-making mechanisms of the new
world order. As things stand right now, we are still standing in the shadows of
the Cold War, yet to transition into a new vision of a the world beyond the
issue of polarity.

The
New Front or the Internal Spillover

Developments
in the majority-Kurdish neighborhood of Al-Ashrafiyeh in Aleppo City come as another
warning sign of how much worse things in Syria could still get. If the
situation is not controlled immediately, spillovers will be felt in the Kurdish-majority
towns of Efrin and Kobani in north Aleppo, and Kurdish-majority areas beyond,
including the critical province of Al-Hassakeh. A new front will signal what
might be an irreversible dissolution process for Syria.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

It’s time to face the truth: with no incentives on the table
and no threats, the truce in Syria never had a chance, and was nothing more than
a piece of political theater staged for the benefit of indifferent and impotent
international audience. The “truciness” of it is all too evident.

Sunday October
28, 2012

Today’s
Death toll: 119. The Breakdown: Toll includes 15 women and 14 children: 56 in
Damascus and suburbs, 27 in Idlib (most in Barrah massacre), 13 in Aleppo, 10
in Homs, 6 in Deir Ezzor (most in Mayadeen), 2 in Daraa and 2 in Hama (LCC).

More than at any time in recent years,
Hezbollah is facing scrutiny inside Lebanon, even from some once-loyal backers,
mostly because of increasing signs that it has become a partisan in a Syria
conflict that has become deeply divisive in Lebanon.

Some 200 people were captured, all but
20 of them by the rebels, the Observatory said. Residents said some 200 rebels
had moved in to the area on Thursday, announcing they had come to spend the
Muslim holidays of Eid al-Adha, starting the next day, in the neighbourhood.

Another failed ceasefire in Syria once
again demands new ways to end the violence. Perhaps the truth-telling tactics
of the opposition in YouTube videos can help hollow out the lies of the Assad
regime so that his remaining support collapses.

The truce was called as the two sides
were battling over strategic targets in a largely deadlocked civil war. They
include a military base near a main north-south highway, the main supply route
to Aleppo, Syria's largest city, where regime forces and rebels have been fighting
house-to-house. It appears each side feared the other could exploit a lull to
improve its positions.

First, it was the pro-Asasd militias cursing freedom in their slogans.
Now, we have rebels doing the same. In this video from a Damascene suburb, a
small rally by Islamist protesters features shouts of “Toz Toz to Freedom, we
want an Islamic Caliphate.” Toz is an Arabic for fart, and has been used by
Qaddafi to address the Libyan people shortly before his demise” http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=293113190789402
Protesters also say they want “the rule of the Quran,” and “Toz to peaceful struggle.”

What happened in Ashrafiyeh, Aleppo City http://youtu.be/z_V5b92uOxc Kurdish
demonstrators demanding departure of Islamist rebels from their neighborhood soon
came under fire from some of the rebels. Rebels present in the neighborhood
were mostly members of Jabhat Al-Nusrah and Aharah Al-Sham, known for their
Al-Qaeda sympathies. Both groups have Islamist Kurdish fighters in their ranks
as well. As such, the scene involves an Arab-Kurdish struggle as well as an
intra-Kurdish struggle.

Friday, October 26, 2012

Marred by violent clashes, and peppered with anti-Assad
rallies, ah the holidays in Syria – so much pain, so much hope, and so much global
indifference.

Thursday October
25, 2012

Today’s
Death toll: 103. The Breakdown: Toll includes 9 women and 6 children: 39 in
Damascus and suburbs (including 10 in an explosion in Al-Zohor neighborhood),
22 in Aleppo (including 4 rebels), 12 in Homs, 11 in Idlib, 9 in Daraa, 7 in
Deir Ezzor, 3 in Hama. Other Developments:
Regime committed 292 violations at end of 1st day of truce (LCC).

In Aleppo
Neighborhood of Al-Shrafiyeh, where the majority of residents are Kurdish,
local activsts reported clashes between rebels affiliated with the Jihadi group
Jabhat Al-Nusrah and local militias affiliated with PYD, the Syrian branch of
the PKK. The clashes left 5 local residents dead.

* City seen as bastion of loyalty to
Assad before uprising * Businessmen hit by attacks, kidnapping, extortion *
Rebel groups, government-linked gangs blamed * Political splits emerge within
business community * Industrial zones operating at 5-10 percent of capacity

The Syrian rebels and their support
networks use social media for a variety of purposes including self-promotion,
fundraising, directing attacks, and exchanging tactics. While the rebels would
still be able to operate in the absence of social media, their financing and
combat capabilities would be diminished, as would the influence of some
high-profile rebel leaders.

Iran is conducting a region-wide drive
with an eye on the regional balance of power. This is what’s at stake in Syria,
and what’s playing out in Iraq, the Kurdish Regional Government, Lebanon and
Turkey. This Iranian power play best explains why Hassan was killed.

Whatever the rationale, Assad is
continuing his attempts to buy the building blocks of nerve agents like sarin.
The CIA and the U.S. State Department, working with allies in the region, have
recently prevented sales to Syria of industrial quantities of isopropanol.
Popularly known as rubbing alcohol, it’s also one of the two main chemical
precursors to sarin gas, one of the deadliest nerve agents in existence. The
other precursor is methylphosphonyl difluoride, or DF. The Syrians were also
recently blocked from acquiring the phosphorous compounds known as halides,
some of which can be used to help make DF.

Syrian refugees, trying to bring some
normality to their new life in Turkey, are setting up schools for their
children. But this is not always with the blessing of their host, as the BBC's
James Reynolds finds out.

Why “Assad is continuing his attempts to buy the building blocks of
nerve agents like sarin?” Wonders Noah Shachtman.

Simple: because his program was never as big and advanced as previously
advertised. The price of maintaining a system based on loyalty to a particular family
above everything else is that you end up with corrupt morons populating key
positions and leading key initiatives. At its best the regime could only
attract third-rate technocrats who would soon become too mired in corruption to
care about doing their jobs, beyond maintaining certain appearances.

About the Author

Ammar Abdulhamid is a liberal Syrian pro-democracy activist whose anti-regime activities led to his exile in September of 2005. He currently lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife, Khawla Yusuf, and their children, Oula (b.1986) and Mouhanad (b. 1990). He is the founder of the Tharwa Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to democracy promotion. His personal website and entries from his older blogs can be accessed here.